Provenance (Imperial Radch)

by Ann Leckie

Zat still smiled. “Most Hwaeans I’ve met feel this way. Your esteemed mother does, I believe, and cares only for the contribution to her reelection fund. I must say, no disrespect intended, excellency, but I have never understood this. You live surrounded by this”—she gestured around, meaning, Ingray supposed, to indicate the parkland and its profusion of ruin glass—“and have so little curiosity about it! Perhaps you use the pieces of it to build a wall. And yet, a floor tile from a building that, it is claimed, one of your Founders might have stood near, badly made to begin with, ugly and cracked and in reality not three centuries old, you will call that a priceless treasure and argue over it bitterly—yes, I see the look on your face when I mention it, I know that the Kaheru family still holds the grudge against Netano for that, though she is not the same Netano and it was a hundred years ago.